As of Feb. 11, Minot Forest Elementary School’s Ann DeMelo will begin her 25th year as head custodian. This year will also be her last. She will be retiring on June 30.

“I have no regrets,” DeMelo said, who plans to retire at the end of this school year. “I’ve been so blessed.”

DeMelo is the first woman to serve as head custodian.

“Just knowing that I was the first woman as a head custodian is great,” DeMelo said. Being the first female head custodian “was a new world, a new challenge, and I loved that.”

Now, DeMelo is happy to have worked alongside other female custodians.

“I’m happy to say that there’s two of us now, me and there’s another woman head custodian at the middle school who does a great job,” DeMelo said.

DeMelo admitted there was an atmosphere of sexism at first, and attributed it to her coworkers wanting the job she got.

“There were a lot of other males in the system that were not happy about it, and saying, ‘she can’t do that.’ But, I proved them all wrong,” DeMelo said. “There was a fear of me stepping in on their territory.”

DeMelo said to earn the respect of her coworkers, she had to prove herself in a one-on-one fashion. She gave the example of one male coworker who gave her a hard time, but after unloading a truck full of gravel and other materials, his opinion changed.

“He said, ‘I was wrong in doubting you… I could not believe with my own eyes I saw that you were right there by my side and did the same exact thing I did,” DeMelo said.

She said that it took her just a few months to earn the respect of all her coworkers.

“They called it man’s work, but now, there’s no such thing as man’s work,” DeMelo said. “I have been a hard worker since I was 16 years. I have been working 40 hours a week since I was 16.”

At 16 years-old, DeMelo was a tailor in a factory. She said she and her sisters had to go to work because her parents could not afford for her to go to school.

“I worked in that factory for 25 years, then I started my own tailor shop for eight years,” DeMelo explained. “While I had the shop, I began working for the school, but it became too much and I stayed with the school.”

“I’ve loved my job,” DeMelo added.

However, medical issues have forced her to retire three years earlier than she wanted to.

“Mentally, I do not want to retire, but physically, I have to,” DeMelo said. “I’ve been fighting with my back.”

“My doctor told me either retire now or retire in a wheelchair,” DeMelo said.

Aside from painting and tailoring, DeMelo would also like to travel to Arizona during her retirement.